Plane was heavy with fuel before deadly landing

A RUSSIAN airliner that took off from Moscow was airborne for just 28 minutes before returning to make an emergency landing while still heavy with unburned fuel, which then ignited after a rough touchdown.

Flames quickly engulfed the aircraft, killing 41 of the 78 people aboard in Sunday’s horrifying accident at Sheremetyevo Airport.

On Monday, Russian news media quoted the pilot, Denis Evdokimov, as saying he followed procedures for landing with excess weight.

But the crew reportedly did not dump any fuel, which is common for flights that have to land soon after take-off to prevent being too heavy.

The pilot said he was not certain why the plane landed hard.

Video showed flames bursting from the jet’s underside as it touched down, then raging across the rear of the Sukhoi SSJ100’s fuselage within seconds as the airliner bounced down the runway.

“Everything happened right away, at lightning speed. There was a strong blow – my eyes almost popped out – a second was a little quieter, a third, and then smoke, and it started to burn,” survivor Marina Sitnikova said.

When the plane came to a halt, some of the people aboard plunged down inflatable slides. Some were carrying luggage, raising concerns that grabbing their bags may have delayed the evacuation.

Evdokimov said the plane had lost radio communications because of a lightning strike.

A flight attendant said there was a sharp flash soon after the Aeroflot flight took off, bound for the northern city of Murmansk.

“We took off, got into a cloud, there was strong hail, and at that moment there was a pop and some kind of flash, like electricity,” flight attendant Tatiana Kasatnika said.

Russia’s main investigative agency said the plane’s flight recorders – data and voice – were recovered from the charred wreckage. Agency spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko was also quoted as saying that investigators were looking into three main possible causes: inexperienced pilots, equipment failure and bad weather.

Storms were passing through the Moscow area when the plane landed.

A survivor praised the attendants for helping save him and others.

“It was dark and there was gas, very high temperature. They helped people out of there, helped them to descend,” Dmity Khlebnikov said.

The SSJ100, also known as the Superjet, was heralded when it went into service in 2011 as a new phase for Russia’s civil aviation industry. But there were concerns about defects in the horizontal stabilisers. Russia’s aviation authority in 2017 ordered inspections of all Superjets in the country.

Transport Minister Yevegny Dietrich said it was too early to decide whether to ground the planes.

One of the dead was flight attendant Maxim Moiseev, Dietrich said.

Russian news reports said Moiseev was in the fire-stricken back part of the plane and tried unsuccessfully to deploy an evacuation slide.